From theory into practice, Research

Research 

Christopher Nolan

Born 30 July 1970

10 points of focus

1.  Batman series  

2.  Inception

3.  Memento

4.  The Prestige

5.  Alfred Hitchcock, filming style and wife behind the scenes

6.  Filming techniques

7.  Story telling, complex stories

8.  Innovation

9.  Tim Burton batman films

10. Equipment 

Quotes

"... If you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze, watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side ... I quite like to be in that maze."

"The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it." - commenting on working with actors who have distinctively different styles.

“I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. "Alien", "Blade Runner" just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.”

[on using CGI in "Batman Begins"] "I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal, I know I've felt it. The demand we put on ourselves was to be as spectacular as possible, but not depend on computer graphics to do it".

“I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.”

“We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale.”

“Working with a legend like Michael Caine is about as enjoyable and relaxing an experience on set as one could hope for. His vast experience gives him an air of good-humored calm that you could almost mistake for complacency until the camera rolls, and you see his focus and efficiency nail each scene on the first take. He once told me that he's never asked for a second take -- he's happy to do one if you have an idea for him to try, but he brings a definitive interpretation to every line. His method has the casual air of effortlessness that can only come from decades of dogged hard work, and you sense that he's still as hungry for every last morsel of a part as he was when he first captured everyone's imagination. A fine actor first, and screen icon second, he's a director's dream.”

“Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing.”

http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0634240/quotes

 

Techniques

Nolan spoke about his directing style in a 2012 interview for DGA Quarterly

I use multi-camera for stunts; for all the dramatic action, I use single-camera. Shooting single-camera means I've already seen every frame as it's gone through the gate because my attention isn't divided to multi-cameras. So I see it all and I watch dailies every night. If you're always shooting multi-camera, you shoot an enormous amount of footage, and then you have to go in and start from scratch, which is tricky time-wise.

Working with actors

I learned lots of things on Memento, but one thing I've always adhered to since then is letting actors perform as many takes as they want. I've come to realize that the lighting and camera setups, the technical things, take all the time, but running another take generally only adds a couple of minutes. [...] If an actor tells me they can do something more with a scene, I give them the chance, because it's not going to cost that much time. It can't all be about the technical issues.

Nolan prefers shooting on film, as opposed to digital video.

For the last 10 years, I've felt increasing pressure to stop shooting film and start shooting video, but I've never understood why. It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable. I think, truthfully, it boils down to the economic interest of manufacturers and [a production] industry that makes more money through change rather than through maintaining the status quo. We save a lot of money shooting on film and projecting film and not doing digital intermediates. In fact, I've never done a digital intermediate. Photochemically, you can time film with a good timer in three or four passes, which takes about 12 to 14 hours as opposed to seven or eight weeks in a DI suite. That's the way everyone was doing it 10 years ago, and I've just carried on making films in the way that works best and waiting until there’s a good reason to change. But I haven't seen that reason yet.

Nolan chooses to minimize the amount of Computer Generated Imagery for special effects in his films, preferring to use practical effects whenever possible. For instance, his films Batman Begins and Inception had 620 and 500 visual effects shots respectively, which is considered minor in comparison to contemporary visual effects epics that can have around 1,500 or 2,000 VFX shots

Images 

Inception 

A skilled extractor is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible.  
DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
Shortly after finishing Insomnia (2002), Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about "dream stealers" and presented the idea to Warner Bros., envisioned as a horror film inspired by lucid dreaming. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale film production, Nolan retired the project and instead worked on Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008). He spent six months polishing the script before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009.
Inception was filmed in six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada on November 22, 2009. Its official budget was US$160 million, a cost which was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure, with most of the publicity involving viral marketing.

A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time.
 

Director:

Christopher Nolan

Writer (WGA):

Christopher Nolan (written by)

Contact:

View company contact information for Inception on IMDbPro.

Release Date:

16 July 2010 (UK)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller 

Tagline:

Your mind is the scene of the crime 

Plot:

A skilled extractor is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible. 

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 80 wins & 105 nominations

After collecting this information I produced a project proposal.

Concept Statement

A brief history of Christopher Nolan

I intend to explore the relationship between: 

1. Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg 
2. Christopher Nolan batman films and Tim Burton batman films
3. His first films to more recent films
4. Filming techniques that have changed over time


I intend to Inform and educate a group of, film enthuastisor Christopher Nolan fans. I will produce this publication to give information on Christopher Nolan and provide an insight into his films and filing techniques. In order to achieve this i will produce a publication that has a hidden meaning or isn't a straight forward book. 



After writing this we then had a progress crit. 

The breadth of appropriate research 

Strengths

There is a range of appropriate research, including quotes and strong images. There was also interesting facts and figures that could easily be used in my publication. 


Areas for improvement 

Talk to film students 




INITIAL CONCEPTS AND IDEAS

A vast range of ideas, some good some bad. 



Areas for improvement

Maybe think about ways it can be packaged or ways it could be looked at. 




Maybe have it as a backwards book, book read in the mirror, peoppe want to get to the end. Gets to the end of one chapter and the rest are ripped out.











More research

 These are all the images i used on my publication.



BOOKS 


House of leaves. 

 This book is about a designer who uses unconventional layouts and grids to form his pages, he also has more than one type on a page in some cases. 

The interesting way in which this book has been made is extremely captivating and it makes you want to read on. 
 

He has many pages like the ones below, and at one part he uses this layout to create tensions when the audience is reading and it makes people want to turn the pages to find out whats happened or whats going to be said. 
 

The image above is perfect example of how a different layout has been used, its not conventional but makes for a interesting page the confuses the reader. 
I feel like these type of layouts i could use on my publication becuase Christopher Nolans films are confusing just like this book, and so if i used layouts similar it would confuse the reader, but not so much that they cant read it.   




FILM DIRECTING SHOT BY SHOT 

This book helps to describe different filming techniques. Some of which are used by Christopher Nolan, this kind of thing i could use in my book, by showing different screenshots of the film and how that type of filming has been done. Like how Christopher Nolan uses the shot coming in form behind the character a lot.

 

The panning shot coming in behind the character. 

 

A table of the actors Christopher Nolan uses.
 

Actor	Following (1998)	Memento (2000)	Insomnia (2002)	Batman Begins (2005)	The Prestige (2006)	The Dark Knight (2008)	Inception (2010)	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Christian Bale				x	x	x		x
Mark Boone Junior		x		x
Michael Caine				x	x	x	x	x
Nestor Carbonell						x		x
Marion Cotillard							x	x
Russ Fega		x			x		x	x
Morgan Freeman				x		x		x
Joseph Gordon-Levitt							x	x
Tom Hardy							x	x
Larry Holden		x	x	x
Nicky Katt			x			x
Patrick Leahy						x		x
Thomas Lennon		x						x
Colin McFarlane				x		x
Cillian Murphy				x		x	x	x
Liam Neeson				x				x
John Nolan	x			x				x
Miranda Nolan							x	x
Gary Oldman				x		x		x
Andrew Pleavin				x			x
Lucy Russell	x			x
Jeremy Theobald	x			x
Ken Watanabe				x			x